Appearing onstage on Friday morning at MegaCon Orlando, Anthony Daniels wowwed the crowds during his 10.30am ‘I Am C-3PO: Meet Anthony Daniels‘ talk, and during that panel he revealed that he had shot motion capture footage for Galactic Starcruiser – aka the Halcyon – which ultimately never saw the light of day.
“Curiously, I was going to be in that hotel. I had shot a scene using motion capture. It was brilliant, but then of course they closed the hotel.”
Just over two years ago on 22nd January 2022 we posted an article which showed Anthony in full mocap mode – tagging himself as #c3po – at the legendary Ealing Studios. We hypothesized back then that he could have been working on either A Droid Story or the (then) yet-to-be-opened Galactic Starcruiser.
Further digging uncovered this post from The Imaginarium, which welcomed another famous droid to its facility back in November 2021.
If this shoot was indeed for the Halcyon then it was filmed ahead of the hotels opening in March 2022, so whether there were long-term plans to change the chronological focus of the voyages by – let’s say – swapping out the all-CGI logistics droid D3-O9 for a mo-capped C-3PO, then that was a decision made long before the issues which eventually saw the venture close on 30th September 2023.
UPDATE: Following our post, the man behind R2-D2 himself Lee Towersey dropped into our Facebook thread and posted the following:
So it appears that footage did indeed get used during the lifetime of the Halcyon. Mystery solved, and cheers to Lee for the info.
Either way let’s hope the Halcyon flies again, and for a flavour of the voyage you can check out our coverage of one of the final tours right here, and listen to our Halcyon episode of Start Your Engines below.